Arsenic Mitigation in Bangladesh: A Household Labor Market Approach

Phoebe Koundouri (), Richard Carson and Celine Nauges

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: A major environmental tragedy of modern times is the widespread arsenic contamination of shallow drinking water wells in rural Bangladesh which went unrecognized for years. Large numbers of people are now starting to show a range of symptoms long associated with chronic arsenic exposure. Rural families in Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, face financial risks from major illness both from the cost of medical care and from the loss of income associated with reduced labor supply and productivity. Because of the lack of comprehensive government assistance programs and formal insurance markets, most of these households have to rely on private, informal, insurance mechanisms. For the poor these typically take place at the household level. While arsenic-related health problems in Bangladesh have long received considerable attention (e.g., Smith, Lingas, and Rahman 2000), implications for the labor supply have not been examined. In this article, we look at the impacts of arsenic contamination on both the overall level of hours worked and the distribution of these hours within households. Using a large sample of rural households matched to arsenic exposure, we find (i) overall household labor supply is 8% smaller due to arsenic exposure and (ii) intra-household reallocation of work between males and females is used to self-insure against the risk induced by arsenic exposure.

Keywords: Arsenic mitigation; Bangladesh; labor market approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q25 Q53 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published in American Journal of Agricultural Economics 2.93(2010): pp. 407-414

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/38275/1/MPRA_paper_38275.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Arsenic Mitigation in Bangladesh: A Household Labor Market Approach (2011)
Journal Article: Arsenic Mitigation in Bangladesh: A Household Labor Market Approach (2010)
Working Paper: Arsenic Mitigation in Bangladesh: A Household Labor Market Approach (2010)
Working Paper: Arsenic Mitigation in Bangladesh: A Houseold Labor Market Approach (2009)
Working Paper: Arsenic Mitigation in Bangladesh A Household Labor Market Approach (2009)
Working Paper: Arsenic Mitigation in Bangladesh: A Household Labor Market Approach (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:38275

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().